


All Those Who Wander

by Lasgalendil



Series: Black History Month [2]
Category: Captain America (Comics), Captain America (Movies), Captain America - All Media Types, Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Artist Steve Rogers, Awesome Sam Wilson, Awesome Sharon Carter, Awesome T'Challa, Bisexual Steve Rogers, Boys Kissing, Bucky Barnes Recovering, Captain America: Civil War (Movie) Post-Credits Scene, Catholic Steve Rogers, Depressed Steve, Depressed Steve Rogers, F/M, Family, Fix-It, Fugitives, Gay Bucky Barnes, Howling Commandos - Freeform, Howling Commandos Legacies - Freeform, M/M, Man Out of Time, Multi, Nomad, Original Character(s), Polyamory Negotiations, Post-Captain America: Civil War (Movie), Reunions, Sam Wilson Feels, Sam Wilson Is a Good Bro, Steggy - Freeform, Steve Rogers Feels, Steve Rogers-centric, Stucky - Freeform, Suicidal Thoughts, Wakanda, World Travel, socialist steve rogers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-21
Updated: 2016-09-21
Packaged: 2018-08-16 10:50:05
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,711
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8099311
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lasgalendil/pseuds/Lasgalendil
Summary: "The world has changed, and none of us can go back. All we can do is our best, and sometimes, the best that we can do, is to start over."Steve Rogers starts over as Nomad, searching for a place in the twenty-first century. But Bucky's gone. And Sam?...Sam's turned him down. And Steve's struggling to keep both the peace and the pieces of his broken heart together.





	

You sure about this, Steve asks. Steve’s selfish that way.  
  
I can’t trust my own mind, Buck says. So until they figure out how to get this stuff outta my head I think going under’s the best thing. For everybody.  
  
And that smile. Shit. It’s sad but serene. He’s lost a lover and friend already to death, and she’d tell him to respect that choice. He damned well must’ve thought you were worth it.  
  
Then it’s done. It’s over. Bucky’s gone. Steve stares out the windows. He sees but he doesn’t look. He knows they’ll come for him—of course they’ll come for him. But he let Buck do it anyway. Steve’s selfish like that. When it comes to Bucky Barnes, the rest of the world can burn.  
  
There’s a presence. Someone. Steve feels he ought to speak. Explain. He tries. To say. Apologize. Something. T’Challa says some words. They’re meant to comfort him, Steve thinks.  
  
They don’t.  
  
They can’t.

* * *

Once there was Bucky. Then there was Peggy. For a time, times, half a time there was _SteveandBuckyandPeggy_. Now there’s nothing. Not even Steve.

* * *

 

days

  
go

  
by  
  
  
and sometimes it seems moments can span centuries, millennia something someone says or does or just the way they move the flick of their hair a flash of blue eyes and he’s turning, staring, yearning wants to laugh to sob to cry

* * *

  
Some days Steve wants to die.

* * *

It’s Sam, of all people, who suggests it. It shouldn’t surprise him (It does).  
  
There’s a flood in Bengal. Spring rains and snowmelt coming down from the Himalayas.  
  
Steve’s never been to India. Remembers like it was yesterday the news about the Salt March, Independence, incensed at a Socialist Party meeting about Gandhi’s imprisonment—had no few arguments with Monty Falsworth over it, back in the day (the man’s father had fought in the Boer War, his grandfather a survivor of Rorke’s Drift. Needless to say, Steve hadn’t been particularly impressed by the Zulu spears and shields at Falsworth Estate. That Monty had donated the entire collection to UNISA in 1946 suggested he’d had a change of heart.)  Hell, she wasn’t even her own country yet until two years after he went under the ice—and Pakistan. Well. There weren’t enough words in the English or Irish or any human language to describe Steve’s feelings about Pakistan.  
  
…that was the Steve who cared. The Steve who carried the Shield. This Steve feels nothing. Perhaps a vague sense of guilt that he should feel something. Anything.  
  
But there’s a flood in Bengal. There are people who need help. So Steve suits up without his Shield, without the weight of Captain fucking America, and Nomad and the Falcon fly out to assist in any way they can.  
  
Steve doesn’t speak a word of Bengali. Hasn’t a clue about the sewage systems and overflow management of Jalpaiguri. Doesn’t know what to expect but people struggling and striving to  just do their goddamn best.  
  
Once, long ago, perhaps, he’d find hope in the strength and endurance of the human spirit. But now? Now Steve is just tired.  
  
Once, not so long ago, Sam had asked him what made him happy: I don’t know.  
  
…he’d lied, of course. Like Buck’d done to him in that apartment in Bucharest. But once, long ago, during the war, Buck had asked him, and he’d said _I just want to sleep_. And he did. For seventy years. Woke to find the world he’d died for had gone and mucked itself up again, that his dreams of a Socialist America, American Labor Party, of a New Deal had been replaced by anti-communist paranoia and propaganda, that Atheism was still so widely disparaged, that “Under God” had been added to the Pledge of Allegiance despite the First Amendment, that evolution was still being contested in schools all these years after the Scopes Monkey Trial. Back in 1942 Buck had promised to take him to the future. Now, Steve’d give anything to go back and change the past.  
  
_Not my future,_ he’d told Schmidt, moments before forsaking all thoughts of one for himself. _Not my future._  
  
But for the first time since waking, he wants one. A future. He'd made his life, his stake, his stand here, and he’d die defending it. Could he be blamed, then, for first wanting to live—? it’s just that, with Peggy dying, with Buck making his choice…well. Steve’s truly alone in the 21st century for both the first and final time. And if he disagrees with Buck’s decision—if he’s fucking devastated by Buck’s decision—he can at least do what Peggy asked of him this time and damn well respect it.  
  
Peggy had passed. And Buck—  
  
Well. Buck was gone. It’d been his choice, his terms, but he was gone. And Buck would want him to be happy. In hindsight, his happiness was all Buck’d ever wanted. And Steve Rogers—the Steve Rogers who woke from the ice, who’d joined SHIELD’s Strike Team, the Steve Rogers who’d moved to DC to be closer to his best gal even if she said he only got to miss her for an hour every day, the Steve Rogers who wore skin-tight muscle shirts and jogged Monument Circle every morning just to get his eyes on some handsome airmen, well. The mask of Captain America might be dead, Steve Rogers himself may be an international fugitive, but he was finally ready to move on.  
  
[Not with Sharon. She was too cold where Steve was too warm, too tough where Steve was too soft, too dedicated, too married to her work to carry the weight of the world and the burden of Steve’s sad heart in her admittedly capable hands. She was too like yet unlike the woman he’d loved to ever be right, be fair, be anything but a echo of Peggy Carter, and only a poor ghost at that.  No. Perhaps he didn’t know her—not truly, not well—but he loved and respected her in his own way. As her own woman—her own person—a fellow soldier and sister in arms to know she damned well deserved better than to live and love forever in the shadow of her aunt.]  
  
No. Steve Rogers was ready to move on.  Not with Peggy. Not with Bucky. Not with Sharon. With Sam Wilson.  
  
Sam, who’d been one of the first to treat him like a person, not a celebrity. Sam, who’d stopped him from walking away when the conversation veered too personal, who’d seen straight through his shallow bravado and awkward flirtations into his weary soul. Sam, who lost a friend—lost a partner—who could understand that pain, that longing, that emptiness. Sam who’d left the Air Force and life of a soldier, and dedicated his life instead to helping recovering vets and rescuing/rehabilitating birds (Steve’d laughed his ass off on his first Duck Watch. Sam’d griped and bitched that “duckling safety is a serious matter, Rogers!”).  Sam Wilson, who’d opened his home and heart to two fugitives on the run. Who’d been there for Steve when the Winter Soldier went from being a threat, being a danger, being a stranger to someone Steve had loved. Who stuck by Steve’s side, pursued waning lead after lead, followed him across Europe without complaint or question, then sacrificed his reputation, his freedom, his own potential happiness just to find Bucky and bring him home again.  
  
So their last night before landfall in that cramped and crowded shipping container, Steve makes the first move. Thinks Sam will be happy. Say _it’s about damn time, Rogers_. But Sam doesn’t lean into that touch, just smiles sadly, says “that ship’s sailed, Cap” and gives him this awful, longing look with those big brown eyes, and that’s that.  
  
And oh. Oh. That rejection stings more than a decade’s worth of disappointed dames in dance-halls ever could.  
  
“C’mon, Cap,” Sam moves that hand from his face, takes a breath, edges deliberately back. “Let’s go do some good.”  
  
“Yeah,” Steve agrees, broken heart in his throat. “Okay.”  
  
So they head out to Jalpaiguri. Nomad and the Falcon. Steve Rogers and Sam Wilson. They’re there together, but both so alone.

* * *

“...and cholera, they’re trying to head off a malaria epidemic,” he hears Sam say. “Need all the help they can get.” They’d cured polio. Eradicated smallpox. Had a shot for measles. mumps. Pneumonia—even the flu. But the biggest killer of them all—? Well. Sam’d said there was still no vaccine. And no likely prospects.  
  
“Who’s our contact?” Steve asks. He trusts Sam. He really does. America’d been founded on the thought it was one’s right, it was one’s duty to throw off such government and provide for the common defense. His ma had been a suffragette, both Joseph and Sarah Rogers had escaped Ireland in the aftermath of the Easter Rising. He’d fought alongside La Résistance, knew more so than most that one man’s terrorist was another’s freedom fighter, a simple revolutionary. It was all in the narrative, the balance of power. And imperialism, well. As Monty might attest, empires—like people— “had a bloody difficult time admitting they were in the wrong, chap.”  
  
“MSF,” Sam supplies. “Granddaughter of an old friend: a Dr. Gabrielle—and shit, man I am pronouncing this wrong— _Adhikari née Dernier_.”  
  
Steve almost smiles. Almost. “No shit,” he says.  
  
“No shit,” says Sam.  
  
They meet her, and oh. Oh, she’s a handsome woman, short, brown-skinned with dark hair swept up in a messy, humid bun, forty and weathered and beautiful. And Steve sees it, there’s the familiar set of her long nose, lips downturned in a seeming frown despite her smile, all small and fiery yet solemn like an ember, burning with Dernier’s wit and passion. “ _Le Capitaine! Putain, c'est pas trop tôt!”_ she cries, and that Marseille pronunciation is like a punch to the gut, takes him right back to the European theater. A night out drinking in London. Becoming the Commandos. She holds out a firm hand, and Steve clasps it in his own. “It is about damn time,” she says, translating for herself. “Sharon and Antoine have been eh, “rubbing it your face” for years.”  
  
“Well, we’re glad to help,” Steve chokes out. “And I’m, uh. I’m not ‘the Captain’ anymore.”  
  
_“Tu m’étonnes_ ,” Gabrielle sighs. “But still a soldier,” then she holds out her arms. “ _Venez ici, mon oncle.”_  
  
Steve goes. And cries. He’s halfway around the world, but it’s a bit like coming home.  
  
…He’s not alone. In all this strange century, he’s never been alone.

* * *

Sam says Syria. Refugee crisis. Steve assumes that’s where they’re heading. He’s surprised to find himself back in the UK. Familiar, hallowed ground.  
  
“Steve Rogers? Samuel Wilson?” the woman asks him over the whirl of helicopter blades.  
  
“You’re—“ Steve begins. Stops.  
  
“Muslim?” she smirks, winks one well-made up eye, teal and cat-lidded, contrasting with the golden undertones of her skin. She's young. Pretty. Impeccably dressed. Carefree and yet so composed. Steve's reminded sharply of both Peggy and Pepper. “Hijabi? Don’t be afraid. Falsworth Manor. Welcome back, Cap.”  
  
“I’d uh, I’d offer shake your hand but I don’t think I’m supposed to,” Steve flushes.  
  
“No,” she laughs. “I’m pretty sure you’re not. I’m a fan of the smile and wave myself. I also do the whole ‘hello” thing. You may have heard of it.”  
  
“Hello,” Steve says.  
  
“Hello yourself.”  
  
“How you doin’?” Sam says.

"Well," she says. "Shall we begin our tour?"  
  
“And uh, who are you, exactly—?” Steve wonders. He feels a bit concussed. It has everything to do with jet lag, not that she's young, and witty, and vibrant, in another time, another life, she could have been Peggy Carter. And here in this spot, on this soil, well. It's as if he's drowning.  
  
“I’m Afareen Falsworth," she clarifies. "I’m an assistant coordinator with the Sorcha Rogers Foundation—aiding recently arrived refugees to find housing, education, permanent employment suitable to prior credentials and/or fields of specialty…oh, and empowering them to make the the psychological transition from their home countries and cultures to England through art, of course.”  
  
And Steve. He tries not to. But his ma. She’s been dead and gone for so many damned years, and still there’s people who remember her. Doing good in her name. It’s not just him. Her memory—she hadn’t, didn’t, _wouldn’t_ —die with him.  
  
“You—you named it after my ma,” Steve chokes.  
  
“Well, that bloody oaf Monty called it the _Sarah_ Rogers Foundation if you can believe it—“ a bright young man interrupts. “Joe Chapman, by the way, webcomicker—it’s not an insult don’t hit me—write the ‘Union Jack’, you may have heard of it? I _do_ shake hands—but Arafeen here changed it back. Said it’d be only proper.”  
  
“I tell Syrian, Algerian, Iranian, and Pakistani women not the Anglicize their names every day,” Arafeen explains as Joe kisses her on the cheek. “It seemed only right.”  
  
“You two, you’re—“  
  
“Fondue?” Joe snickers.  
  
“He’s got your number, man,” Sam grins. “He’s got you good.”  
  
Steve flushes. Seventy years and he’s still choked up, but it’s happiness now, not grief. “Never gonna live that one down, am I?”  
  
“To be honest?” Arafeen grins. “No. No I don’t think you really ever shall.”  
  
 “Yeah, mate. I’m her bloody husband and you’re Steve fuckin’ Rogers _so shake my hand, damnit,_ ” and Chapman grips Steve’s hand, slaps his shoulder as eagerly as Lang. “C’mon. Come inside. The damn tea’s getting cold.”

* * *

Another disaster. Another protest. Always on the move.  
  
It’s August, now. They’re back in the States. Someone wants to put a damn pipeline through a wilderness with one of the west’s largest watersheds. “Not technically,” Sam points out. “We’re not in the States. We’re in the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation, Cap. It’s sort of its own separate country.”  
  
“Who’re we with this time,” Steve wonders.  
  
“Uh, some tween vlogger.”  
  
“I have no idea what you just said.”  
  
“Internet video, man. Internet video.”  
  
“YouTube?”  
  
“Exactly.”  
  
“Should I know her?”  
  
“Well…” Sam takes a long breath. “Her maternal great-grandad was a Navajo GI in the 200th Coast Artillery, not a code-talker—didn’t stop him from getting interrogated, mind you. Survived the Death March, the camps, got his unlucky ass shipped out to Japan right before you liberated Bataan. Survived Nagasaki, if you can believe it.”  
  
“Should I know her?” Steve repeats, can’t help rolling his eyes.  
  
“Nope,” this young punk protester says, startling him. “You never met him, you’ve never heard of me. But he met a man while he was over there in Japan. Some Army doc studying the long term effects of radiation. Saved his life."  
  
“This man,” Steve asks her. “Did I know him?”  
  
“Yeah, you mighta heard of him,” she shrugs. Pops her gum. “Went by the name of Jim Morita.”  
  
And Steve? Steve just smiles. And tears come to his eyes. He meant to be happy. Instead he’s crying.  
  
…that happens a lot, recently.  
  
“I’m Steph Whitethorn,” she says, all confidence and crooked smile. Her hair’s asymmetric, the left side shaved, the right pulled into a tight black braid that reaches down her slender back. She’s wearing a T-shirt with the emblem of a familiar shield emblazoned with the words SOCIAL JUSTICE WARRIOR. "This is my girlfriend, Jill Morita."

"I'm his great-niece," Jill says shyly, stumbling over her words. "There's um, there's quite a lot of us, actually..."

"It's good to meet you," Steve says. "Both of you."  
  
“Your parents came to this country because they were forced off their land," Steph tells Steve. "They were persecuted for their religion. They were refugees. So are we. Indigenous rights are human rights. And we’re all human, whether we're Navajo or Lakota or Dakota or Irish. Welcome aboard, Cap.”  
  
“I’m—“ not him anymore. Not sure if I ever was.  
  
Steph shrugs, still cool and collected, nonchalant as if she’s discussed identity politics with international fugitives any day. Clasps her girlfriend's hand. “Seems to me it’s America that’s changed,” she says. “Not you. If anyone ought to be changing their name, it’s this country. You? You’ve always tried to do what’s right.”

* * *

It’s September. Flint, Michigan. And Steve wonders, not for the first time, not for the last, how something like this could happen. How the same world that created the genius and compassion of Elon Musk and Tony Stark and Pepper Potts and James Rhodes and Sam Wilson could have ever ignored the poisoning of its own people.  
  
“Who is it this time?”  
  
“Harrison Ford,” Sam winks, that fucker. He says no more on the matter.  
  
“Jones.” The kid’s tall, skinny, milk-white with freckles, a wide, wrinkling nose and bright, brown eyes, a gorgeous, familiar, full-lipped smile, and springy, coiled red hair that goes on for miles. He's a Dugan, it turns out. A Dugan _and_ a Jones. “Indiana. Don’t even start with me, man.”  
  
“I uh, I actually understood that reference,” Steve says, offers a hand. “Spielberg was on my list. I’d offer my condolences…”  
  
“Oh, hell no. Two of my great-grampa's were Howling Commandos," Indy brags. "So the guy whose name is synonymous with four decades worth of children’s daytime tv and hand knit sweaters does NOT get to console me. At least I’ve got action figures.”  
  
“Who?” Steve asks.  
  
“It’s a beautiful day in the neighborhood? Really?” Jones turns to Sam with a disparaging look. “What the shit, man.”  
  
(“Fuck,” says Sam. “Add it to your list. I can’t believe I fucking forgot about Mr. Rogers…”)

* * *

 

“You got insomnia?” Indy asks him when he catches Steve staring out into the darkness. Contemplating mortality.  
  
“Yeah. Some nights. Just can’t seem to sleep.”  
  
“Alright. Sit your ass down. We’re watching _Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood_.” It’s not _The Secret of Kells._ It’s not fresh vibrancy of _The Princess and the Frog_. It’s not the stark nostalgia of _Snow White_ , not Tyrus Wong's beautiful, evocative backgrounds in _Bambi._ It’s just goddamn _puppets_ , for fuck’s sake, but it makes Steve cry all the same.  
  
“He was a hero,” Indy tells him over a midnight cup of coffee—from bottled water, of course. “Just like you. With his music. And art. It’s not all punching Nazis and jumping out of planes, you know. Sometimes the best warrior is the one who works his ass off so he and anybody else never have to fight at all.”  
  
“I’d like that,” Steve says.  
  
“You don’t have to do this, man,” Indy tells him. “Any of this. You can rest, you know.”  
  
“I want to. God, I want to, it’s just…” _You start running,_ skinny little Steve Rogers said long ago, _they’ll never let you stop_. “If I stop, I don’t—I don’t think I could get back up again.”  
  
“That’s just it, man. You don’t gotta.”  
  
“No,” Steve chokes. “I mean I—“ _I might not just die, I might kill myself_ , he can’t bring himself to say. And he’s considered it, God, he’s considered it, mortal sin and all.  
  
“Hey, man,” Indy puts a gentle hand on his arm. “I’m gonna go wake Sam for you, okay? Sounds like you could really use him now.” And Steve wished. Oh, how he wished. But there was no healing there, no hope, no future, only friendship and heartache and inevitable loss. Everything he loved turned to dust. But Steve loved anyway. He's selfish like that.

* * *

He can’t cry. All his tears come up empty. Sam stays in the same bed in order to keep an eye on him. Takes everything sharp from the bathroom. Even Steve's razor.  
  
Sam sleeps. Steve lays awake. He reads his Bible. He thinks he’s an Atheist. He isn’t sure.  
  
He thinks if there’s a God, he should’ve let Job die. _Please God,_ he prays to an entity he doesn’t believe in, not anymore, not since Bucky Barnes fell off a goddamned train in 19-fucking-45. _Just let me die._

* * *

  
Tibet. Myanmar. American Samoa. They’re always on the move. Steve doesn’t know where or when. Steve doesn’t care. He’s selfish that way.  Sam takes him. Steve follows. He trusts Sam. Trusts Sam with his life and his soul and so, so much more.  
  
Beijing. Lagos. Capetown. Port-au-Prince, Haiti.

* * *

That's how Steve finds himself at the _Ecole Nationale des Infirmieres_. There’s a memorial, of course. To the ninety-some students and faculty who lost their lives in the earthquake. And there she is, Peggy’s Goddaughter. Dernier’s granddaughter. Gabrielle’s younger sister:

  
Margarite Cartier Dernier

  
_S'ils tombent, nos jeunes héros,_  
_La terre en produit de nouveaux,_  
_Contre vous tout prêts à se battre!_  
  
_Aux armes, citoyens..._  
1 Septanm 1977-12 Janvye 2010

  
Only thirty-three. Older now in death than Steve would every be. She’d died, Steve thought strangely, the year before he was pulled from the ice. Gone six years now for his seventy. He’d missed so many. So much.  
  
But he’s here, now. He’s here in the sunshine with Sam Wilson, and he’s working on living in the here and now. The day to day. Maybe shit happens for a reason. Maybe Steve Rogers really did die in that icy grave, and all of this is Purgatory. He doesn’t know. He can’t know.  
  
But he can do his goddamn best.

* * *

  
But—  
  
But Steve’s seeing things. Seeing things in the crowd in the market in the tired, the poor, the huddled masses yearning to breathe free because that’s Bucky, that’s James fucking Buchanan Barnes. But Buck’s in a cryostasis chamber in a Wakandan research lab. His Bucky’s gone. His Bucky’s dead. His Bucky’s never coming back.  
  
But this stranger. He moves. He walks. God, he looks just like Bucky would, all smiles and easy grace.  
  
“…Bucky?” Steve asks. He can’t help himself. But this man has two arms. Two bare arms, fleshy and whole. It can’t—it can’t be Bucky.  
  
“Who the hell is Bucky?” the stranger quips. And Steve’s sad heart just shatters.  
  
That face splits into a sunlit smile. “Hey, champ.”

And Steve is sobbing. “Bucky, I—“

“Aw, c’mere, you big lunk. Don’tcha cry. Gimme a hug.”

“I—what—how—“ Buck kisses him. Slow and sloppy. Stops that train of thought before it can leave the platform.

“Did ya really think I was goin’ back under? Jesus Christ, sweetheart, I wouldn’t do that to you.”

“No, indeed.” Buck’s not alone. Of course he’s not alone. Last time Steve saw him he’d been unconscious missing half his goddamn metal arm.

“King T’Challa—?” Steve asks in wonderment.

But the warrior only nods. “Captain Rogers.”

“Uh, Steve. Steve is fine, your um, your majesty.”

“Let us both dispense then,” he suggests, “with these formalities.”

Steve looks between them both. “I—I don’t understand.”

Buck snorts. ‘What else is new, shit for brains?” Then kisses him again.  
  
“The deception was necessary, my friend. Even from you. If the world believes the Winter Soldier has been offered asylum in Wakanda, well. There is no one looking for a James Buchanan Barnes.”

Buck rolls his eyes. “It ain’t like I’m usin’ it as a fuckin’ alias, pal.” Then Buck sees Steve. Really _sees_ him. Sees his heartbreak and hopelessness and loss, sees the hurt that goes deep down into his soul.  
  
Buck winces. “Aw, shit, sweetheart. For it all to work we had to be convincing, so—”  
  
“So the deceit was perhaps unkind,” T’Challa provides. “Yet necessary.”

“You never went under," Steve says. "It was all just..."

“Oh, I went under, alright," Buck shivers. "Far as the nursing staff and security and all of fuckin’ Wakanda knows, I’m still under.”

“My sister and uncle will continue to fight against extradition,” T’Challa promises. “And will continue this ruse for however long it is necessary.”

“Necessary for what?” Steve wonders.

“Time. Compassion,” T’Challa says. “That the world might see sense.”

“Your sister?”

“The Black Panther. And Queen Shuri.”

  
“She got me a new robot arm,” Buck whispers, awestruck. “’s better than the last one—better than my real one, I figure. Lookit.”

“I have been a warrior all my life," their confidante explains. "But I am not ready yet to be King. Instead I will do what I can to earn that title, and my redemption. It is not enough to renounce vengeance. One must also seek to do justice. And have compassion. I owe my people this much, before I take again the mantle of King."

"That's, that's..." Steve flounders. "I'm glad. For you. That you're—taking time. I needed some for me, too."

T'Chall only nods, casts him a knowing look. "My business here is done. I will return to my Queen and my country. If ever you have need of me, my friends, we will come. The Black Panther protects their own.”

“I, I don’t know what to say," Steve chokes.

Buck snorts. "How ‘bout you thank the man an’ just shut up an’ kiss me already, pal.”

So Steve does. And T’Challa smiles solemnly once, then walks away, blending into the crowd as with the grace of both King and Warrior.  
  
And Sam? Sam just looks at them, all wistful, then makes to leave as well. And the words _thank you_ —  
  
—the words thank you just don’t seem enough. Any goodbyes catch in Steve’s sore throat as he holds back a sob. This is what he wanted, Buck here in his arms, Buck safe, happy, alive. It’s everything Steve's wanted, yet it isn’t what he wanted…  
  
“Oy, Wilson, get your fine black ass back over here,” Buck calls suddenly. “If anyone deserves to be mackin’ all over this hunk of 100% All American Beef, it’s you.”

“You knew—?” Steve sputters.

"What, that you've got it bad for Wilson, or that he was in on the whole shebang?"

Sam flushes. Scuffs his shoes. “You think I’d turn that offer down for any other reason, Cap?”

“Of course he knew, you lunk,” Buck tuts. “What, you got the brains of a half-eaten can of spam? First you go AWOL on HYDRA’s ass, crash a damn airplane, then you drop your fuckin’ shield—? Hell, sweetheart, I wasn’t leavin’ you alone. Not after all that. An’ who better to look out for you than the fella that’s had your back?”  
  
“As friends,” Sam insists, face gone tight. “Paul and Darla Wilson didn’t raise some home-wrecker. I wasn't about to break up a marriage, not even for your All American Star Spangled Old Glory Ass, Cap.”  
  
Steve frowns. “Don’t I get any say in this?”  
  
Sam just shakes his head. Doesn’t meet his eyes. “You got your boy back, Cap. You don’t need me.”  
  
_But I want_ , Steve wants to say. _I want—_  
  
“Whose breakin’ up anything?” Buck challenges. It's another century, another millennia, the Dodgers have moved, they've slept for seventy years but Bucky Barnes is still going to bat for Stevie Rogers. “Aw, shit, Wilson. Ain’t like it’s the first time I ever shared him. Fuck’s sake, we lived six blocks from the St. George Hotel in the ’30’s. Spent the whole damn war doin’ the three-card monte with Carter.”  
  
And that’s hope. That’s hope blooming in those beautiful brown eyes. “He’s lying,” Steve says, feels his face flushing, breath catching, heart racing in his chest. “Monty was never involved.”  
  
“You’re a little shit, Cap,” Sam says, shaking his head. Then something changes, something’s _decided_ , and he steps in and kisses Steve, just a real light one on the lips. Then Samuel Thomas Wilson grins like a damn fool. “You know that, right?”  
  
“Pal, he’s the biggest shit,” Buck corrects, nuzzling up against Steve’s neck, biting at his ear, one hand pawing at each of their asses. “That’s Steven Grant Rogers. He’s the biggest shit of ‘em all.” And Steve? Steve has his arms and his heart full of the two men he loves most in the world. And the world, the world has changed. There's countries formed from the ash heap of a World War, empires have risen and fallen, The Dodgers are in LA, he left his mother, his religion, his country behind in a previous century and Peggy Carter is dead and buried, survived her own name sake by six long years. But she'd been right: He couldn't go back. No one could. And sometimes— _this time_ —the best they could do was simply starting over.

**Author's Note:**

> DC Wildlife Rehab and Rescue:
> 
> http://citywildlife.org/about/us/  
> http://citywildlife.org/programs/duck-watch/duck-watch-faq/
> 
> You can’t tell me Samuel Thomas “Caw Caw I’m a Bird I’m a Plane I’m the Motherfuckin’ Falcon” Wilson doesn’t volunteer for this organization. He definitely goes to schools and churches and community fairs and educates kids about what to do if they see nesting ducks or injured birds. 
> 
> …You also can’t tell me Steve doesn’t laugh his ass off while heart-eyeing this adorable dork, either. 
> 
> Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF):  
> http://www.doctorswithoutborders.org/
> 
> You can’t tell me Jim Morita didn’t serve in it, and that Gabrielle and Margarite “Fuck Neglected Tropical Diseases” Dernier(s), MD & RN wouldn’t jump on the chance to involve Grandpa’s old pal.
> 
> Joseph Chapman is the first non-Falsworth to take up the Union Jack mantle from Monty in the Marvel-616 universe.
> 
> Steph Whitethorn's grandfather's tale is based off the life of Joe Kieyoomia, Navajo, Soldier, POW, hero:  
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joe_Kieyoomia
> 
> Margarite Cartier Dernier's Epitaph  
> (From La Marsellaise)
> 
> If they fall, our young heroes,  
> The earth will produce new ones,  
> Ready to fight against you!
> 
> To arms, citizens...
> 
> Because when Jacques Dernier and Steve Rogers saw Casa Blanca in 1942, it took place in the then African Theater, in a Morocco and a France held by Nazi Germany. It's still one of the most damn evocative scenes ever put on film:  
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KTsg9i6lvqU


End file.
